xviii, 220 pages ; 22 cm

"The financial crisis keeps us on edge and creates a diffuse sense of helplessness. Well-nigh unfathomable problems lead to measures that seem like emergency operations on the open heart of the Western world, performed with no knowledge of the patient's clinical history. The gravity of the situation is matched by the paucity of our understanding of it, and of how it came about in the first place. In this book, compiled from his Adorno Lectures given in Frankfurt, Wolfgang Streeck lays bare the roots of the present financial, fiscal and economic crisis, seeing it as part of the long neoliberal transformation of postwar capitalism that began in the 1970s. Linking up with the crisis theories of that decade, he analyses the subsequent tensions and conflicts involving states, governments, voters and capitalist interests--a process in which the defining focus of the European state system has shifted from taxation through debt to budgetary "consolidation." The book then ends by exploring the prospects for a restoration of social and economic stability. Buying Time is a model of enlightenment. It shows that something deeply disturbing underlies the current situation: a metamorphosis of the whole relationship between democracy and capitalism"--

"The financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 still has the world on tenterhooks. The gravity of the situation is matched by a general paucity of understanding about what is happening and how it started. In this book, based on his 2012 Adorno Lectures given in Frankfurt, Wolfgang Streeck places the crisis in the context of the long neoliberal transformation of postwar capitalism that began in the 1970s. He analyses the subsequent tensions and conflicts involving states, governments, voters and capitalist interests, as expressed in inflation, public debt, and rising private indebtedness. Streeck traces the transformation of the tax state into a debt state, and from there into the consolidation state of today. At the centre of the analysis is the changing relationship between capitalism and democracy, in Europe and elsewhere, and the advancing immunization of the former against the latter"--

"First published as Gekaufte Zeit, Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 2013."

Includes bibliographical references and index

Introduction: Crisis theory, then and now -- 1. From legitimation crisis to fiscal crisis ; A new type of crisis ; Two surprises for crisis theory ; The other legitimation crisis and the end of the postwar peace ; The long turn : from postwar capitalism to neoliberalism ; Buying time -- 2. Neoliberal reform : from tax state to debt state ; Financial crisis: a failure of democracy? ; Capitalism and democracy in the neoliberal revolution ; Excursus : capitalism and democracy ; Starving the beast! ; The crisis of the tax state ; From tax state to debt state ; Debt state and distribution ; The politics of the debt state ; Debt politics as international financial diplomacy ; 3. The politics of the consolidation state : neoliberalism in Europe ; Integration and liberalization ; The European Union as a liberalization machine ; Institutional change : from Keynes to Hayek ; The consolidation state as a European multilevel regime ; Fiscal consolidation as a remodelling of the state ; Growth : back to the future ; Excursus on regional growth programmes ; On the strategic capacity of the European consolidation state ; Resistance within the international consolidation state -- 4. Looking ahead ; What now? ; Capitalism or democracy ; The euro as a frivolous experiment ; Democracy in Euroland? ; In praise of devaluation ; For a European Bretton Woods ; Gaining time

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